Paper Boats
by iandyourghost
Summary: Love like loss is never enough. Tsuna and Hibari at the end of a dream.


**Disclaimer: **If _Reborn_ were mine it would _not have ended even remotely like it did._

**A/N: **Practicing my writing, Eloping!fic and Foreignhoneymoontourismporn!fic are highly overused but it's always been a fetish of mine and China is like the only foreign country I have first-hand knowledge of, okay.

IIIIII

"I," begins Tsuna, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt behind his back, guiltily, "I'm-"

"Don't start." Hibari interrupts. The two of them, crowded into the same compartment headed west, the countryside outside delineated and bisected a child's cubism. Tsuna's knees knocking against Hibari's in time to the sway of the train, angry shouting outside, the cadences foreign and undulating. The heart of the mainland is crowded, there is no worse place for Hibari to be, swarming with herbivores. He can smell them from here.

"But, Hibari-san," Tsuna forges on anyway, he always lets his heart lead his mouth, the fool. "If it weren't-you wouldn't have, I-"

The shouts outside crescendo, a crash and the unmistakable sound of flesh hitting a solid, unforgiving object. Tsuna flinches against the window, falls silent again, and the train surges forward over the landscape, taking them ever away from home.

IIIIII

_The mission went badly,_ the radio whined tinnily, the sound fraying at the edges, _Don't come back-Please, Tenth-_ a gasp, a bang, that same sickening thud, a sea of white noise.

They flee.

IIIIII

Beijing late in the evening is just as hot and humid as Beijing in the morning tucked into that rattling train; it doesn't spare its inhabitants even the mercy of variation, the undulating pallor that washes out the garish red of Tsuna's sweater, the scab on his lips that cracked open and dripped onto their luggage as Hibari hefts their belongings out of the cab and turns to watch his surroundings with barely veiled distaste.

Tsuna clumsily thanks the driver, his accent flat and unaffected, wiping messily at his mouth, and carefully counts (stolen) bills out to the man, who casts one more wary glance at Hibari before returning to his cab.

Their room is small, cramped, but relatively clean-because Hibari would accept nothing else, even this far along his fall from grace- the bed is summarily shoved against one corner of the room, their luggage stacked on the wall, and Tsuna collapses gratefully onto the sheets. A building this high up in the air ought to sway as their train had, but the skyscrapers around it sucked up all the wind and movement before it can get to their apartment. Tsuna misses it, like one misses the motion of the sea upon disembarking.

"Hibari-san," he tries again.

"We need to buy dinner." Hibari cuts in, anticipating Tsuna's clumsy question.

This high up, and the lights from below still penetrate, angling in through the lattices of the window and into their dark room, Hibari's shirt lit up gray-scale, the two fingers-worth of skin from his unbuttoned shirt washed out and slick with sweat from the sweltering evening. Tsuna licks his lips, tastes pennies and salt, digs his fingers into his shirt, opens his mouth, closes it again.

IIIIII

In either denial or apology, Tsuna makes an effort out of turning their exile into a convoluted attempt at vacation. He buys colorful maps from street hawkers who critically eye his brown hair and light eyes, amping up prices and calling them "foreigner's discount"- in another time, Hibari would have slammed that man into the wall, made him bleed, but he merely narrows his eyes, turns his head, his knuckles brushing under his shirt where his tonfa ought to be- and, armed with a dog-eared dictionary, Tsuna laboriously maps out the city.

China is an old country, its joints stiff and fingernails dirty rheumatic and creaky in the winter, its streets filled to brimming with old resentment and old ghosts. Young families and young children pack their threadbare packages and flee, leaving behind old men too tired to reach. More ghosts wander the streets than people.

IIIIII

Tsuna's first culinary endeavor ends them up at a street restaurant, swaying on creaky chairs, the heat from the open-air kitchen an oily wave sliding into their clothing, barely felt in the sticky heat. The waitress sets down dishes in front of them with a clipped phrase that has Tsuna scrambling for his dictionary.

Hibari stares dubiously at the seething red oil while Tsuna frantically flips pages.

"Do now," he mumbles to himself, "the first accent? The second? Now, no, nao..." He stops at his page, a dawning expression of horror on his face, looking up to watch Hibari chewing circumspectly.

"What is this, Tsunayoshi?" Hibari's eyebrows are drawn together tightly. Tsuna blanches. The recognition and the spice seem to hit Hibari simultaneously, and he doubles over, wheezing, while Tsuna lunges panickedly for the water, succeeding in knocking the entire dish onto the floor as Hibari hacks, eyes crossed and watering, fingers clutching convulsively at Tsuna's shirtsleeve, drawing a bewildered crowd.

IIIIII

With nowhere to go and nowhere to be, there's nothing to do but try again. Tsuna pours over the guidebooks with greater fervor, hunts out vendors with their carts strung with tinsel and foreign characters, mouths out his requests as Hibari watches impassively. Yams covered in papery skin, earthy and mournfully sweet, spun-sugar confections in dazzling shapes, red bean buns spangled with sesame seeds. The corner market with cages full of crickets, frogs, sweet meat, rice paper that melted in your mouth, bright cubes of confectioner's jelly.

They eat popsicles, standing in the middle of the Forbidden City, pineapple juice dripping down Tsuna's wrist and the corners of Hibari's mouth vermillion. The Great Wall and its blood-wetted stone, built on the bones of its creators like all great empires are. A shaky busride out to see the soldiers of clay, the palaces of jade, the fox princess with paws for feet

_-"and one day she took off her robes and fled back to the forest but all the concubines after her, in jealousy, bound their feet tightly so as to copy that swaying gait the emperor loved" murmured the tour guide in stilted Japanese, at the foot of the garden, beauty like pride and honor and all lovely things must be paid for in sweat and blood, but no one cares at all about anything but the finish line anyway: years of chewing through sheets and snapping chopsticks clear in two inhaling lungfuls of sandalwood trying not to scream the smell of your own flesh suppurating your entire body engulfed in tender agony your mother's ruthless hands the clean crisp snap, and your husband, won with that dutiful torture, regards you with cold eyes-_

Hibari accepts each clumsy offering with the same bland expression, and Tsuna chews on his lip, remembers Hibari's customary bento- rice, tamagoyaki, umeboshi, vegetables, minimalist, prepared by Kusakabe, like clock-work, every day during school and even after that shipped to Italy from Japan at a great expense-his habit of returning to Nanimori for every vacation, long and small, like a bird migrating homeward every summer- fiddles with the orange popsicle stick in his hands, dripping all over his wrists, which, given the right speed and thumb pressed against the grain can produce a comparable sound to bone, hollow high and sweet the sound radiating in spirals like the grooves on shells, thinks: I should have given more.

Loss like love is never enough.

IIIIII

Far away, on a different coast, the sun rises over the horizon. Italy, Tsuna remembers waking up to fingers of sunlight on his face, heavy with a physical presence, the taste of honey in his mouth, redolent, watching the dust motes scatter along his bed sheets when he rises. Blood oranges, tart and sticky, wine in the morning, the crisp folds of his suit jacket creasing under Gokudera's palm as he greets him, the afternoon sun refracting tumblers and paperweights, scattering over the glossy bloodwood, imported, dark and red like spilled wine. Kyoko's hair a halo the color of whiskey, the scalloped rice-paper edges of her skirt, a smile to rival the light streaming in from that immense window.

Hibari, cool and neat, only occassionally deigned to wander by the estate, Kusakabe-san close by his heels.

IIIIII

Tsuna wakes up with his throat burning and his legs tangled up in the sheets so hard his toes are tingling, his mouth full of cheap detergent and cotton and lights ever-pouring in from the window through the shoddy drapes- he has been sleeping more and more now these days; lonely, aimless sleep, going to early and rising late, the habits of someone with nowhere to be, and as such he has been waking up in the middle of the night frequently. Hand to his chest, he sits up and smooths down the crease marks, angry red and purple twining fingerlike around his legs, with unsteady hands.

In the darkness Tsuna has to squint to make out the room but he can see the expanse of Hibari's back, nearly draped off the side of the bed, covered in cotton despite the heat, his spine an ungentle arch, illuminated by the light.

He fancies he can see the indentations of Hibari's shoulder blades, the vulnerable curves of his ribcage- he hadn't been eating enough no matter how much of their meager funds Tsuna had blown away to bring him food.

Hibari in the dark is quiet, almost vulnerable, shoulders loose and Tsuna has the sudden, selfish urge, to run his hands against those little dents, curl up there like he hadn't done since he still slept with his mother.

"-sorry, Hibari-san," he says, before he can stop himself. "I'm sorry that- I couldn't save them-us. You won't listen to me but I'm still, I'm sorry. If only-" Tsuna feels Hibari's shoulders tense a sluggish moment before Hibari's flipped around, slammed him against the pillows again, legs on either side, hands digging into his shoulders hard enough to bruise.

"Shut up. Shut up," his mouth is set in a hard thin line ricktus like a tectonic plate, it's been ages since Tsuna's felt this kind of physical threat and his heart starts to hammer in his chest, his throat going dry. "I told you not to-they're gone and it won't make a difference what you say."

This is the longest conversation they've had in weeks, months. Tsuna grips the sheets under him, his heart is beating so hard he can feel his pulse in his throat. "If-not for me they wouldn't be dead, and you know it, Hibari-san, I-"

"I told you to-shut the_ fuck up_."

Hibari lunges and their teeth knock together hard enough for Tsuna's eyes to water. His nails digging 5 pinpricks of pain into each shoulder, Hibari presses Tsuna further down sinks his teeth into the wound on Tsuna's mouth and yanks hard enough Tsuna can taste the blood blooming into his mouth as Hibari angles in again, lips hard noses bumping, just as bruising at the first time.

When Tsuna, tentatively, reaches up, seeking, and brushes his fingers against the lapel of his shirt, Hibari- yanks himself away, nearly stumbling off the bed, wide eyes wild and silvery in the artificial moonlight. His chest heaving, he wipes the blood from his lips, turns without a glance at Tsuna, and reaches for the door.

Tsuna, hands still shaking, turns and curls his hands over his ears, the sound of oceans roaring so hard in his ears it drowns out the slam of the door, eyes burning mouth salty with tears, closes his eyes, pulse swaying like a ship out to sea, a tiny paper boat all alone in the horizonless deep.

IIIIII

_"Have you heard of the theory of multiverses, Tsunayoshi-kun?"_ Byakuran's face on the screen breaks out into a smile, dainty dimpled mouth, eyes thistle-colored slits. _"According to it, there are thousands upon thousands of alternate universes pressed up right against each other, and a new one is born every time a choice is made. For example, in one universe, my hair could be blue, or I could be a girl or"_ and he reaches off screen, drags back an afroed head _"perhaps, in another universe, you rescue your friends, succeed in foiling my plans, and live happily ever after with that pretty blonde."_

_"Sadly,"_ a foxy, sly laugh, all teeth,_ "that universe doesn't seem to be this one. Because you see, in this universe, this little boy will die. But he needn't worry too much; he will have all the company he wants soon. This time, Tsunayoshi-kun, you lose and I win, and I am going to hunt and gut aaall your little friends, starting with this cow, and it'll be all your fault."_

__IIIIII

FIN


End file.
